I build interactive installations and study how people's use of tools impacts their technical imaginary of the future.
As a PhD candidate at UMD and lecturer in Human-Computer Interaction, I research the relationship between hands-on making and technological understanding. My classes cover interaction design with an STS focus, game design with a focus on procedural generation, and the programming of human-centered interfaces. My writing often ends up being about (mis)trust and safety, how the mutability of interfaces impacts what can be believed about the world. I am always trying to figure out how the magic trick works.
At UMD, I collaborate with Dr. Jen Golbeck's lab on AI and social media research, where my writing spans papers on AI art generation and large language models to research on core expressions of online sociality. This work explores how we shape, and are shaped by, our uncertain tools.
Tools
Code toys I keep alive to help run my classes.
- Gamestorming
- Small Solutions App Generator
- STL Model previewer using Three.js
- Base page for a Twine visual novel exported with Twison
Useful tools by other people:
Teaching
This is a list of classes I have designed for UMD. I have previously taught independent workshops at ITP-NYU, OCADu, and for a variety of private clients.
Interaction Design
A graduate-level design course that takes students through how to think about what an "app" actually is, using introductory STS texts as conversation and design prompts. Students work in small groups to design a speculative future where we can see one person's phone screen and all the applications they use in the course of a day. I have been teaching this class for various institutions since 2015.
Programming Human-Centered Interfaces
A mixed-level creative-code approach to interface programming. Students learn about javascript frameworks, data storage, data privacy, and the history of the surveillance internet while building an HTML5/CSS/JS interface they design in Figma. Students learn the business history of the web along the way.
This course runs every semester. The software I use to teach has shut down or substantially changed every six months since the course started in 2019.
Game Design
A mixed-level course based on Tracey Fullerton's Game Design Workshop, students will go through a non-digital game design two weeks for the whole semester. They learn about the trade-offs between paper prototyping, software development, user testing, and the shortcuts used to get to launch. Readings look at behaviourism, gambling, visualisation of dynamic data, deceptive patterns, mass online games, and focus on how game environments push HCI research. The next version of this is Spring 2026.
Technology and Spectacle
Drone shows, LED panels, live code, flamethrowers and concert support: how do public art installations work? This mixed-level course takes students through how to use contemporary live-code and public installation software to build showcase installations. This course will run in Fall 2025
Makerspaces
What is piracy, anyway? Why is it different than DIY, or manufacturing? This graduate-level course looks at what dupes and counterfeits are while teaching students to use digital fabrication tools to produce physical objects. This course has not run recently.
Writing
Below is a selection of my recent publications. Please feel free to reach out if you cannot access something and would like a copy.
With Celia Chen & Jen Golbeck
At the lab, my specialty is in science and technology studies and digital fabrication, with a dab of art history.
Unlimited Editions: Documenting Human Style in AI Art Generation (2025)I've been writing about the tech industry's distaste for older forms of culture for a long time; this article proposes a way to attach credentials to image generation model outputs in EXIF or other metadata. Co-written with Celia Chen.
Ephemeral Myographic Motion: Repurposing the Myo Armband to Control Disposable Pneumatic Sculptures. 2024. Related talk at CCC 2024. This paper covers the reverse engineering and development of an interactive pneumatic sculpture that responds to the Myo armband, support defunct since 2014.
Evaluating Machine Expertise: How Graduate Students Develop Frameworks for Assessing GenAI Content This is the workshop presentation of a one-year interview study into how graduate students use large language models for support during their post-post secondary experience.
Cross-Platform Violence Detection on Social Media: A Dataset and Analysis For this paper I was part of the coding and discussion team, and did poster design for the presentation of the ultimate machine training. If you want to see the poster, just ask, it has a bird on it.
LLMs as Academic Reading Companions: Extending HCI Through Synthetic Personae The original pass at the above-listed graduate student study: how do people actually use LLMs when they think no-one is really looking? They replace their mum and offload work that is not core to their professional identity.
Older Writing
This writing happened during my first career, organizing not-for-profit creative technology spaces in Toronto while working as a senior javascript developer.
Truth, Post-Truth, and Subscriptions: Consensus, Truth, and Social Norms in Algorithmic Media. 2017. This book chapter is about how when you can't consistently see someone else's lunch on the timeline, the timeline makes you more lonely and more prone to believing things that might not necessarily be the most truthful.
Exclusive Spaces. 2016. This chapter is on how mild appearance of risk will result in overcommitment from target user populations, which makes it really easy to develop a strong sense of inclusive fellow-feeling.
The King is Dead, Long Live The King. 2015. This essay on how difficult it is to catch a break in Canadian retail did something like 225,000 views in an hour when it went live just after the closure of Target in Canada. Canada's now seen the Hudson Bay itself close; retail is very difficult in Canada. It is much more difficult when hedge fund debts get involved, but the distances, population gap, and centralization of the fashion industry in Quebec - and China - hasn't changed much in ten years.
Viridian Design versus the Culture Industry. 2013. This polemic adequately expresses my dislike, even at the time, for how people close to the tech industry handle the culture industry.
About
Alex Leitch is a lecturer and PhD student at the University of Maryland, College Park. They teach courses on how computers interact with people and vice-versa. Alex's current research is on how people's use of tools impacts their understanding and acceptance of differing visions of the technical future.